nightmares
by adryanna's echo
Summary: ""Can you tell me, Cato?" she asks aloud again, the wind drifting around her, lifting her words high into the air. "Is dying better than living?"" Winning came at a steep, steep price for the girl with the knives. AU. Slight Clato.


**Author**: **adryanna's echo**  
**Fandom**: _The Hunger Games, _Suzanne Collins  
**Story Title**: "Nightmares"  
**Character/Relationships**: Clove/Cato  
**Rating**: T  
**Warnings**: Violence and mild bad language.  
**Story Wordcount**: 817  
**Disclaimer**: I only own the original concepts. All settings and proprietary language are owned by the author of the work from which this is derived.  
**Notes**: AU. Yeah, I decided to try writing something depressing.

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Clove is running, running deep into the brush, adrenaline coursing through her veins as inhuman roars sound behind her. The tall grass scratches at her legs as tree branches claw at her hair. The rain pours around her, soaking her to the bone, whispering for her to stop being such a coward, to _turn around and fight already, _and the wind seems to whisper in her ear _my little Clove, turn around and be a good girl and make Momma proud _and the path begins to narrow until she cannot run forward anymore. The _things_ behind her are getting nearer, she can hear them and their pants and she just knows they're thirsting for her blood. So she turns around, grasping for the knife she always kept hanging from her belt but she's clutching at air and _it's not there_ and they're on her, clawing at her skin and—

She wakes up, her hands flailing at the empty space in front of her, sweat all over her body. She decides she needs some fresh air, and climbs out of her bed, patters through the hallways to the elevator, and rides to the roof.

The wind whistles in her ear, betraying nothing. She settles into a little nook, the place she goes to every year when the nightmares inevitably haunt her. They occur sporadically back in the District, but it's always when she's back in the Tribute Tower, in the choking rooms of the Capitol filled with too-bright colors and revolting perfumes that make her head spin, that they come back in full force.

The usual one is the one about _that _incident, when Cato's hand slipped from hers and he fell, fell, fell into the mass of teeth and claws and those eyes, the eyes of the dead tributes, some of which she had killed herself. Sometimes in her dreams it's not the muttations, but rather a gaping, black abyss with no end and an invisible force won't let her fall down with him. She can't decide which is worse- a replay of your lover's death because of you or watching him vanish completely, without a trace. At least in real life she got a coffin to cry over.

The other one that happens is the forest one, where she's running, running as the grass scratches her legs and the branches claw at her hair and the rain pours down and the wind whispers in her ear, and the path narrows until she cannot go on any longer. But when she turns around to fight she can't find her weapon and she's unarmed and terrified and Cato's not there to protect her and then she wakes up, grasping and clawing at thin air.

Then there's the whole host of them where she kills them over and over, Lover Boy and the Girl on Fire and Foxface and the little girl and Thresh and they just keep rising back up again with eyes that bore deep into her soul that say _you killed us, you killed us_, and Clove just keeps hacking away- what else can she do?- and they keep getting up and staring at her with those accusing eyes and there's just blood everywhere, all over her and them, and the rain that falls turns red and heavy and the ground runs with streams of blood and she just can't stop and they just keep coming. They just keep coming.

Clove sighs, burying her head deep into her arms. She thinks about the two kids she's coaching this year, the blond-haired knife-thrower that she sees so much of herself in and the brunette boy that's strong and sturdy, just like Cato was. That's right, Cato _isn't _anymore, he _was_.

"How's death, Cato?" she muses quietly aloud, speaking to no one in particular. She's not sure what happens after dying, but she's sure as hell that there's no God because if there was then why would she be suffering like this? Why would she be trained into a bloodthirsty killer and thrown into a stadium to fight with other _children- _because that's really what they all were, just children- and kill them? She was told winning brought happiness, but now she's pretty sure participating in the Games seals a dark, dark fate.

Sometimes Clove doesn't know what to do with her kids, to let them die and be spared the terror and torture she faces daily or to help them live, and gain fame and recognition and riches beyond their wildest imaginings, but suffer daily, over and over again, with the memories of innocent blood on their hands.

"Can you tell me, Cato?" she asks aloud again, the wind drifting around her, lifting her words high into the air. "Is dying better than living?"

Just for a moment, she swears she can hear his gentle laugh, the one he always saved for her, floating on the breeze.

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**A/N: **So how was it? My first attempt at a Hunger Games fanfic. :) Review please!


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